Again, Firefox is causing a huge battery drain on my Android device when it’s not running. I’ve set everything up so that it has no chance of running in the background, yet last night I saw a 6% battery consumption, a large part of which was caused by Firefox. To avoid this, every time I exit I have to force close it.
I need a browser that works across all my devices, I would like it to be fully open source and have synchronization between my computer and smartphone. I would prefer it not to be based on Chromium. Firefox, if it didn’t have this issue, still consumes a lot of battery when in use and is slow on Android, but I could accept that. But for it to drain so much battery when not in use, no. Any suggestions for something I might have missed?
#Android #Browsers #Firefox #Chromium
Strange as I’ve a fairphone 4 running CalyxOS and I’m ashamed to say I have at least 90 tabs open on Firefox and it isn’t causing a battery drain. I do need to get around to closing a few though.🙃
@justine it happens from time to time. It hasn’t been happening for weeks, then a couple of days ago it started behaving this way again.
What I don’t tolerate is that it I say “no background processing”, I expect no background processing 😉@stefano@bsd.cafe @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk The one and only real question is: why is nobody able to build a good, reliable, secure and trustworthy browser? Seems like we only have the choice between plague and cholera. On the one side there is Firefox, secure and privacy aware, but with terrible performance, and on the other side there are the chromium’s. Fast, but with questionable privacy. But none of them is really good. It’s a shame
@NebulaTide@bsd.cafe @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk I agree. I wish we had more choices, not only those two families of browsers. And Safari, but it’s limited only to Apple devices and OSes
@stefano@bsd.cafe did you consider Brave as a browser? Very restricted as a starting point
No clue on battery usage
@justdude@mastodon.nl I’ve considered it in the past, but I’ve read some things I didn’t like about it so I’m trying to avoid it.
@stefano@bsd.cafe true they sell anonymous data but who knows what else
@stefano@bsd.cafe I’ve been using Mull, installed via F-Droid. I don’t know whether it does the synchronization that you ask about or not, though.
@stefano@bsd.cafe
I switched to Vivaldi some weeks ago. Sync between module and desktop works and I’m quite happy with it.@lme@bsd.cafe thank you for the suggestion. I had already tested Vivaldi and found it interesting. I don’t love it’s closed source and chromium based, but for now it is ok
@stefano@bsd.cafe
It feels a bit different than Chrome, though.
I’m even using it’s email client but it’s a bit rudimentary.@lme@bsd.cafe I’ve also tried to use it for emails, but still prefer Thunderbird
@stefano@bsd.cafe if this is a samsung phone, you can try to put it to deep sleep. https://www.samsung.com/us/support/galaxy-battery/optimization/
@hjakovel@toot.lv thank you, but it’s a Pixel (powered by GrapheneOS).
@stefano@bsd.cafe I found Firefox absolutely hammered the battery on my Macbook. Switching to Safari made a noticeable difference
@stefano@bsd.cafe Consider checking Firefox Focus, not sure about the battery usage though
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-firefox-focus-android@ricardo@bsd.cafe thank you. I’m not sure that sync can be enabled on Firefox Focus
@stefano@bsd.cafe It can’t 😕
Why not take the browser plugin dependency out of the equation, for example with Floccus?
https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@ricardo/113579912999338193@ricardo@bsd.cafe I’m more interested in history sync and sending/receiving tabs. But I’ll investigate what will happen changing the equation
For it to show a drain over that time, it must’ve somehow been running in the background, right?
Managing background apps on Android is a challenge without root.
Maybe try setting up another user profile (the “Work Profile”) and run it there? Using apps like Island, you can launch apps in other profiles without actively switching profiles. I do this for crappy apps that like to run all the time - Island will shut down those apps however you want. If nothing else, signing out of that profile ends the app, while your main profile continues.
That said, I don’t see this use with Firefox, and I’m a real bastard to my phones. My current Firefox stat is 8% over the last 3 hours,and I’ve been using it.
I also run Mull, which is a fork of Firefox with some stuff removed. It seems a little better on battery.
@BearOfaTime@lemm.ee thank you for the hints!
@stefano@bsd.cafe Phones can be weird and I spent hours just trying to figure things out. It sounds like Firefox is running or was running for some time. How is your signal. I have noticed when I worked in the boonies with bad or no cell reception that my battery didn’t last nearly as long. This was due to the phone using more power to access the cell network. Firefox could be using more power if there is a script or page that updates at a certain amount of time (think news pages updating the page every few mnutes) and trying to pull the page.
Have you checked what data is being up at night or any updates happening in the background
@culper@infosec.exchange I’m usually connected via WiFi, so it shouldn’t be related to mobile signal.
I think that something gets stuck and continues to run, even if the app isn’t allowed to run in the background.
I’ll try with Fennec and Mull, just to see if it is related to any kind of telemetry
@stefano@bsd.cafe out of curiosity, what do you do want to sync in a browser? Passwords? Bookmarks? For both you can look into alternative solutions
@acirep@bsd.cafe for passwords I’m using vaultwarden. For bookmarks I’m using Wallabag - mainly history and the ability to send/receive tabs
@stefano@bsd.cafe I wonder what causes this to happen for some people. This doesn’t happen to me but I see so many people complain about it.
